Satellite Porn in Canada

Canadians are about to see a lot more of themselves on screen, albeit scantily clad and perhaps in some compromising positions.

Or so promises the first homegrown Canadian adult-oriented entertainment TV channel, which went on the air Thursday at 10 p.m.

The Montreal-based cable network, called Vanessa, went live first with its French channel, with an English counterpart to follow next year.

Its focus is not hardcore, but rather the softer side of sex. The channel will only show triple-X films after 11 p.m.

There is nothing like this in Canada, says Vanessa's content manager Pierre Thibeault. It's the first time Canadians will be able to see themselves as much as they will. This will be the case not only in the films they put on air, Thibeault says, but in programs that talk about sex — reality series, for instance, or sitcoms.

Anne-Marie Losique, known as Quebec's Queen of soft porn, and also head of the production company Image Diffusion International, is the woman behind Vanessa. She promises that the new network will show at least 40% homegrown content — double the amount than its carriage licence requires.

The woman behind Canada's first homegrown pay TV adult entertainment channel insists its programming will be soft and tasteful.

Quebec TV personality and producer Anne-Marie Losique, a household name in her home province for her daring style and X-rated series, promises content on Vanessa — that's the channel's name — will be much more than just porn movies.

The French-language adult subscription channel is launching in Quebec for $14.95 a month in October, with an English-language counterpart promised for the rest of Canada in late 2011.

There's nothing shameful about Vanessa, Losique said in an interview. It's going to be a general-interest TV with a sexy twist.

She noted the channel will offer some hard-core material, but stressed that overall, it is going to be soft — a Canadian answer to Playboy Channel.

Recently, Christian nutters expressed 'outrage' that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) gave the green light to a national pay TV sex channel that will encourage and sustain a homegrown adult entertainment industry.

Losique said she understands religious groups' concerns, but said Vanessa is not a porn channel. There are enough of those already. That's not what we're interested in. She said X-rated movies will represent less than 10% of the programming aimed mostly at couples.

The channel will offer a range of erotic-themed dramas, reality shows, documentaries and variety and magazine shows. Losique said market studies have shown Quebec viewers want to learn something while watching X-rated content.

Christians are 'appalled' that Ottawa is giving the green light to a Canadian pay TV pornography channel that will encourage and sustain a homegrown adult entertainment industry.

The channel, called Vanessa, will begin airing Oct. 28. Montreal-based Sex-Shop Television licensed the channel in 2007 as a national pay TV service. The licence requires Vanessa to air 20% of Canadian programming. But it's only now launching the French-language adult subscription channel in Quebec for $14.95 a month, with an English-language counterpart promised for the rest of Canada in late 2011.

Don Hutchinson, director of law and public policy for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, is 'outraged' that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is in effect, supporting a pornography industry that will lure young Canadians.

We have an official government body saying that a pornography industry must exist in Canada, Hutchinson said: Studies have shown that there are various levels of corruption, from organized crime to engagement in human trafficking and prostitution that are all affiliated directly with the pornography industry. The types of violent and explicitly sexual portrayals that are displayed in pornography reduce people to objects, Hutchinson said. [perhaps better to turn people into objects rather than turning them into paedophiles, which seems to be where church sexual repression often leads].

The CRTC, Canada's TV watchdog, said the pornography channel must follow industry codes on violence and equitable portrayals of the sexes.

The new service, billed as Canada's Playboy Channel, promises a range of erotic-themed dramas, reality shows, documentaries and variety and magazine shows. The Quebec broadcaster also will broadcast its soft-core pornographic content in HD.

Canadian cable and satellite TV services already feature a host of XXX-rated pay TV adult content, but they source the programming from U.S. suppliers.

Hutchinson said the Canadian pornography station will be given some form of preference, likely a lower channel number that will result in higher viewership.

He also lamented that while the CRTC has approved new pornography channels, it also recently rejected two applications for Christian radio stations in the Ottawa area.

The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada will now try to convince Canadians not to subscribe to the Vanessa channel: If it goes on air and it doesn't have enough subscribers, then the channel will die of a natural death .

A faith-based nutter family group said it would like the Harper government to intervene to block a broadcasting licence issued to a new Canadian porn channel.

The Canada Family Action Coalition wants the Conservatives to quash last week's decision by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to grant a licence to adult film network Northern Peaks.

The licence granted to Alberta-based Real Productions requires the new channel broadcast 50% Canadian content. That means Canadian young people will be enlisted to work on and in some cases appear in porn films, says Charles McVety, president of CFAC.

McVety says by setting such a high Canadian content requirement, the CRTC is effectively stimulating the growth of the domestic porn industry: It is to the public detriment to fuel an industry where women are degraded and treated as sex objects.

He also says both CRTC and the cable companies give preferential treatment to lucrative porn broadcasters but short shrift religious programming. He is concerned that the CRTC will allow cable companies to offer the station on a free trial for a number of months: That to us is corrupting minds and getting them hooked on this material.

Under the Broadcasting Act, CRTC decisions can be appealed to cabinet, although it is unusual for cabinet to overturn a decision, particularly one based on content. Such an appeal would put Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government in the position of having to decide on the morality of legal pornography.

A spokesman for the Department of Canadian Heritage said cabinet would have 45 days to act on a request to review the CRTC decision on Northern Peaks.

McVety admits it is not particularly likely cabinet will get involved: We would be happy if they did, but we understand the parameters in which they operate and we don't anticipate they will make such a move.

Canada's federal regulators have given the go-ahead for a Canadian-made porn channel and has licensed Edmonton-based Northern Peaks -- as long as the digital channel commits to 50% Canadian content.

Northern Peaks' Shaun Donnelly is confident he will find a cable or satellite distributor to carry his channel, asserting there's a huge, unfulfilled market for local porn. I've always found there's a real turn-on to watching and knowing it's people you could run into in the grocery store, he told Canwest News Service.

This is the third porn channel the CRTC has approved since 2003.